Working for glory: collaboration in online communities

 
Tim Tyler
27th June 2010

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One phenomenon that no longer surprises us (though it still puzzles us in some product categories) is the considerable effort that some people will put into an online community that interests them.

And apparently for free.

But there are incentives for helping in a community, be it of interest, of practice, of place etc. A recent paper in the Open Innovation Forum aligns with our experience in thanking and rewarding heavy contributors in our Company-hosted Ideas Exchanges / On line co-creations communities.

This paper points out that the main incentives are;
  • peer recognition and
  • the value of the improvements that result from the collaboration.

It is also true that these rewards encourage ongoing involvement in the community, not just for the duration of a particular co-creation task;

  • recognition requires interaction with people, fellow contributors, that you admire, respect - recognition is a very particularistic gift from the community to the contributor - leaving the community deprives you of this interaction
  • belonging makes all of us feel committed to the group - plenty of incentive to stay in the community and stay active
  • hours of interaction and mountains of typing represents an investment that most of us will protect through to success, this is closely associated with  
  • stubbornness (more kindly decisiveness) that means once the contributors focus on a result, backing out is not an option. 

It seems to us that the implicit pleasure and satisfaction of team based problem solving is magnified by recognition from peers sharing the toil. Much more rewarding, but similar in kind, to the thrill of solving a tough sudoku. Secretly we all want to be recognised as a super hero at something. Who needs to be paid if you can be part of the Justice League?


 
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Tim Tyler (not verified)
2010-07-06 16:28
Update: McKinsey adds to this subject

A recent McKinsey Quarterly article adds weight to this view; "Unlocking the elusive potential of social networks" by Michael Zeisser, June 2010.https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Unlocking_the_elusive_potential_of_soc...

He writes of two insights into online participation motivation;

The first: "The Power of Importance...An effective way for a brand to be useful in the context of social networks is to make people who originate a word-of-mouth conversation seem important within their own social environment. Recognition by peers is a powerful motivator, and brands that allow users to gain it deliver real perceived value. When users publicize that recognition, it translates into word of mouth."

The second: "The Allure of Virtual Items...It’s our strong intuition that virtual items play an important role in facilitating virtual word of mouth. This belief, at its core, is based on observing user behavior. While the notion of virtual goods—nonphysical objects used in online communities and games—still puzzles many executives, it’s quite apparent that consumers love them. People acquire or compete for virtual items obsessively on Foursquare, Zynga, and many other sites. It is estimated that virtual goods have become a very real $5 billion industry worldwide."

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